Understanding the Clery Act Compliance Team Policy Instrument Using Contextual Interaction Theory

The Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act is a consumer-protection law solely applicable to higher education institutions participating in student financial aid programs. This study addressed the perceived lack of sustainable institutional implementation efforts, which have become the focus of federal program reviews, subjecting campuses to civil penalties and public scrutiny. A quantitative sequential multimethod study using a survey and content analysis was used to address whether Bressers’s contextual interaction theory (CIT) could explain relationships between group dynamics, interdepartmental collaboration, and Clery Act compliance within higher education institutions. Correlational and regression analyses tested connections and causality between interpersonal and policy implementation dynamics and institutional dynamics and noncompliance. The findings indicated that participants appeared to be negatively motivated in terms of their institutions’ likelihood of pulling together their Clery Act compliance teams. Results also showed that participants encountered constructive and obstructive forms of cooperation and symbolic interaction with regard to participating in their teams’ policy implementation processes. This study also found that inadequate information significantly predicted noncompliance across years of audit history. The findings encourage social change by giving institutions empirical results revealing compliance-practitioner experience as a rationale to assess their organizational and structural environments. Recommendations include future Clery Act research involving the CIT lens to shift the paradigm toward intrinsic programmatic managerialism associated with compliance expectations